Scarcity Mindset: What It is and Why You Should Avoid It

When you have a scarcity mindset – which is based on fear – you may suffer a variety of emotions, ranging from anger, anxiety, worry and stress. These feelings are never good. You believe there is never enough money to go around, you believe everything around you is permanent, and your language always contains the words, I can’t or I don’t have enough.

No matter what life has chosen to throw at you, bad or good, your first concern is always about how it is going to affect your financial situation. There is a chance this has followed you since childhood after possibly hearing arguments or conversations about the lack of money within the household.

It becomes a problem when it brings itself up in all aspects of your life. The scarcity mindset, within limitations, can be an asset when you are short of cash and needing to focus on where to put that money. When it starts to run your life then is the time to put things in perspective, you do not want to be running around in circles with your mindset bringing you down and making you feel like the financial situation is going to last forever.

Life is Exactly What You Make of It

Life is what you make of it and when you are constantly saying “I do not have enough,” or “I can’t do that,” then that is where you will choose to head with your life. You turn down amazing opportunities because you see yourself as financially unstable. You may also overspend on items you don’t really need, clothes, or food and become overweight from the experience. You may also be inclined to keep a hold of things from your past that don’t have any worth to you now, which leaves your home messy and cluttered.

When somebody gives you a compliment and you are unable to take it graciously, then this may very well have something to do with it. “There must be something wrong with that person if they are complimenting me” are the thoughts that may come to mind. You may begin to doubt everything about yourself which just isn’t true; all you need is to change your mindset, and life would become so much better.

Jealousy is a Common Symptom of the Scarcity Mindset

Do you hate feeling jealous when you see another person achieving success? This is another common feeling of someone suffering with mindset scarcity. You feel that their success in someway has a connection to your failure of achieving an abundant lifestyle, or that they have achieved something that you see as unattainable for yourself. When you have that feeling where you are angry at the person for succeeding where you have failed, it is time-consuming and wasteful. This can amount to lost relationships as the emotions may inadvertently shine through.

Having this mindset may also interfere with the business part of your life. Doubts may arise, caused from you thinking that there is not enough people interested in what you have to offer, or that there is nobody that will want to pay for your products, or even that they won’t see you as a credible person to buy from. Thinking like this can have the potential to lose a lot of business and will put the person in a lower mood due to the lack of success.

This can be an extremely dangerous mindset for a person to be in. You start compromising on numerous things, agreeing to things that you said you never would, and changing your mind about the decisions you make. It can make you second guess yourself and change the way you think.

It Will Prevent You from Achieving Success

Have you ever wanted to build your own business, succeed in life? This can allow your future growth to feel impossible to achieve, it becomes habit forming and the potential that you thought you had starts to seemingly decrease. The effects of the scarcity mindset can be a devastating blow to ones self-esteem.

Another way in which a few people show their scarcity mindset: sometimes it goes unnoticed and to others it is highly obvious, you make the conscious decision to show your lack – some examples may be that you under tip at a restaurant.

Scarcity mindset needs to be avoided for so many reasons – personal and professional. You do not want to be failing because you think you cannot find the finances to go out and live your life, you have the ability to succeed, but this mindset may be in the way of you living your dreams.

You do not want to lose friends and family through the jealousness of them succeeding at something that you have deemed impossible. There is so much in life that this will make you miss out on, and if one is in that mindset, then that person should try to find a way out of it fast before it begins to destroy everything that they have worked so hard to create for themselves.

Posted by Igor Ovsyannykov

I'm a digital nomad and entrepreneur bouncing around South East Asia. When I'm not working here, I'm out taking photos or writing travel articles for Nipananlifestyle.com. Follow me on Instagram: @igorovsyannykov